Joe Biden, Xi Jinping to speak by phone in effort to improve U.S.-China ties

HONG KONG — National security adviser Jake Sullivan met with a top Chinese defense official in Beijing on Thursday, a day after the White House said President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Jinping would speak by phone “in the coming weeks.”

Sullivan, who is on his first trip to China as national security adviser, met with Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission, in the highest-level public engagement the Biden administration has had with the Chinese military.

Sullivan “stressed that both countries have a responsibility to prevent competition from veering into conflict or confrontation,” the White House said in a readout of their meeting.

The meeting comes at a time of rising military tensions between China and U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific, where Washington has criticized growing Chinese pressure on Taiwan, a self-governing island democracy claimed by Beijing, and Chinese military actions in the South China Sea, a strategically important waterway that Beijing claims virtually in its entirety.

The White House said Sullivan raised the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the U.S. commitment to freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, as well as concerns about Chinese support for Russia’s defense industrial base as it wages war against Ukraine.

His meeting with Zhang was the first time a U.S. official had met with a commission vice chair since Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in 2018.

Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for two days of talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as part of an effort to address tensions in what is generally considered the most important bilateral relationship in the world.

The White House said the two sides had held “candid, substantive and constructive” talks on a range of bilateral, regional and global issues.

“Both sides welcomed ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication, including planning for a leader-level call in the coming weeks,” it said in a readout of the Sullivan-Wang meeting.

A readout from the Chinese foreign ministry said the two sides “discussed a new round of interaction between the two heads of state in the near future.”

Both sides said there are also plans for a call between their respective military theater commanders. Xi agreed to resume military-to-military communications last year after he cut them off in 2022 in response to a visit to Taiwan by Rep. Nancy Pelosi,D-Calif., the U.S. House speaker at the time.